Teaching & Learning :: Experience Music Project

The Project

The Experience Music Project – one of Seattle, Washington’s most popular visitor attractions – is a nonprofit museum created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and is focused on contemporary music and culture. Often referred to as the EMP Museum, it was founded in 2000 and features dozens of exhibits which have been displayed internationally and domestically.

The Challenge

The museum’s curators expressed interest in building an exhibit dedicated to Hip Hop, and specifically wanted a unique approach to a cultural timeline of the genesis of the genre and an interactive web experience.  The challenge of combining three decades of hip hop history and presenting milestones to users in an engaging and inspiring method was quite daunting.

The Approach

For this project I served as the project management and information architecture resource on the Hip Hop Timeline kiosk and web experience. 

The exhibit – launched in 2000 – leveraged video and music clips to take users through a journey from hip-hop’s infancy through to its current-day evolution. As the EMP Museum is a contemporary museum dedicated to music and culture, the audio-visual timeline was created to align with the soul and style of the entire museum.